​Is there an elephant in your scrapbook? Your journal? Your yearbook? In a sense, these can represent first drafts of our personal history, but they don’t have to be the final draft. God warns his people against generational consequences for wrong-thinking and wrong-living (sin) but promises to lavish generational blessings for right-thinking and right-living (righteousness). In this final installment of the Elephant-free Family Life series, Pastor Greg Byman shares some insights about how a relationship with God empowers us to not only identify the generational elephants that have held back authentic communication but also break the generational sin that too easily entangled our ancestors and imperils the next generation.

Notes

​You swore that you'd never (ever, ever...) say that like your father and never (ever, ever, ever...) say that like your mother and, yet, look at who you've become.... Is there an elephant in your parenting? Every parent begins parenthood the same way: a naked baby with no owner’s manual. Years, laughs and tears later, mom and dad have done some things right and other things...less than right. Through it all, God promises that he is bigger than the elephants in our parenting. In this third installment of the Elephant-free Family Life series, Pastor Greg Byman shares some principles about how a biblically-minded dad and mom can, with God's help, lead even the scariest bull elephants out to pasture where they belong, and recover authentic communication the way God designed it.

Psalm 139:23-24 English Standard Version (ESV)
23 Search me, O God, and know my heart!
Try me and know my thoughts![a]
24 And see if there be any grievous way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting![b]

Notes

By Pastor Greg Byman
St Joe Community Church
Sunday, November 11, 2018

​Is there an elephant in your marriage? Every marriage needs a process for addressing hard issues. Whether a marriage has suffered through strife with in-laws, infidelity, chemical addiction, loss of a child, or any number of heart-wrenching struggles, God promises that he is bigger than the elephants in the room that we find too painful to address and resolve. In this second installment of the Elephant-free Family Life series, Pastor Greg Byman shares some principles about how a biblically-minded husband and wife can, with God's help, lead even the scariest bull elephants out to pasture where they belong, and bring peace to a home.

Notes

Has the elephant in your home become the family pet? Every family has its difficult issue(s), and while the elephant might seem docile and domesticated for now, a 12,000 pound behemoth still lingers and lumbers from room to room, generation to generation, threatening to maim and crush its roommates. For this first installment of the Elephant-free Family Life series, Pastor Greg Byman shares some principles about identifying elephants that prevent effective family communication.

Alternatively: Find this sermon on your favorite podcast platform.

Notes

​​The temptation for a church is to rest into a fellowship, where followers of Jesus Christ can huddle while the storm rages outside. Now in its 16th year as a church plant in Fort Wayne, St Joe Community Church is Preparing for More in 2019. Today Pastor Greg Byman preached on girding oneself to reach more souls for gospel in 2018 and 2019, and what that looks like for the local body of Christ.

Pastor's Notes

How does serving the needy serve the needy, and serve you? Jesus taught his followers to both be generous to the needy and, in that generosity, focus on a reward from God, not recognition from men. Otherwise, a man might someday discover that God found his “good works” to be not all that good after all. Pastor Greg Byman today dives into Matthew 25:31-46 as he preaches “Serving the Needy: The True Test of Real Faith.”

Pastor's notes

How authoritative is your authority? When man sinfully kicks God off the throne of his life, he soon realizes that he needs a replacement authority. While our nation fumbles around, hopelessly looking for some compelling substitute for God, Christians have an opportunity to re-introduce the beauty and majesty of God’s true authority, expressed personally in the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Today, Pastor Greg Byman focused on Matthew 8:5-13 as he preaches through “Real Authority,” at St Joe Community Church on Sunday, October 7, 2018.

Pastor's Notes

About St Joe Community Church
St Joe is located at 2900 North Anthony Blvd., just a few blocks south of the campus of Purdue University at Fort Wayne. Pastor Greg Byman serves as the senior pastor and the entire St Joe church family welcomes you to join us for worship service each Sunday at 10:00 am. For more information visit www.StJoeCommunityChurch.org or call (260) 471-4704.

In January of 2009, Pastor Greg Byman preached a sermon series on Difficult People. This is the first installment on "Critical People."
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St Joe is located at 2900 North Anthony Blvd., just a few blocks south of the campus of Purdue University at Fort Wayne. Pastor Greg Byman serves as the senior pastor and the entire St Joe church family welcomes you to join us for worship service each Sunday at 10:00 am. For more information visit www.StJoeCommunityChurch.org or call (260) 471-4704.

Many sermons in the St. Joe archive are machine-transcribed. St. Joe is presently transcribing its entire sermon library to render its content more easily accessible to the deaf and hard of hearing, those who speak English as a second language, and to make the sermon content searchable for everybody. While machine transcription makes this logistically and financially more viable, accuracy is sometimes sacrificed. St. Joe is gradually replacing machine transcription with human transcription as time and financial resources allow. Each sermon costs between $30 to $60 to transcribe. If you would like to help see the preached Word of God become accessible to more people, please consider an investment in the St. Joe ministry through the PayPal platform by sending funds to StJoeOnlineGiving@gmail.com, or click here. ​